Goodbye Waist Length Hair Goal!

‘ello Loves!

As many of you know, my goal was to grow my hair waist-length straight. Keyword: was. Last spring I even purchased a shirt to measure my progress on the way, but I’ve never published a picture with it. The problem is ever since I started this blog and its accompanying Instagram page, I began to notice the obsession within the “Natural hair” community with length (and loose curls–I’ll save my curl pattern thoughts for another day) and to put it nicely, it annoys me. While I love the growth I’ve seen in my hair and love sharing tips with others, I found myself beginning to obsess over my own hair length and whether I was retaining enough growth. I felt a sort of pressure to reach my hair length goal in a certain period of time and questioned whether I could reach it faster.  I debated taking hair supplements that promised ridiculously fast hair growth, religiously studied my ends, and…I’ll save you all the unnecessary dramatics and internal debates, in short–growing my hair out was no longer fun and exciting. It’d become an obsessive research project.

The simple fix for this was to stop comparing my hair growth and length to others and focus on me. I’d never cared about anyone else’s hair growth/length before in comparison to my own, so it made no sense to start now just because I started a hair blog. And just like that, I gave up my “official” waist-length hair goal. I’ll still track my progress for you all, but for me, I’m just happy to have healthy hair of any length. Long, short, thick, or thin–it’s still just hair.

xo,

E

Blowout Comparison: Cold vs. Hot

Hey loves!!

I know I’ve been gone forever and a day, but I’m back! Be sure to check out and follow my Instagram page instagram.com/simplycurle where I post more frequently. I just restarted it from scratch though, so there are only a few pictures there now. I’m going to keep this post short and sweet. I wanted to share a blowout comparison with you all. The top photo is from a blowout using cold air and the bottom is from using hot air.

 

 

As you can see, using cold air stretched my hair less and gave me more volume. These pictures were taken two weeks apart (top-early April; bottom late March). Blowdrying your hair using cold air is a great alternative to using hot air, especially if you’re looking to reduce the amount of heat you use on your tresses. I usually blowdry my hair after parting it into six sections, but I think I may have been able to get a little more length with the cold blowout if I would have used smaller sections.

Do you like to blowout your hair before styling? I prefer wet styling myself.

xoxo,

E

 

Side Braid Protective Style

 

 

 

 

 

‘ello loves,

I tried a new braided protective style yesterday.

After deep conditioning my hair with Avon’s Damage Repair Mask, I used Cantu Shea Butter’s Leave in Conditioning Damage Repair Cream and Carrot Oil for styling. I parted my hair in two sections, and cornrowed (under not over) each section to my nape. Then I braided one side over to the other so there would only be one braid at the bottom. Here are more pics:

  

I’m hoping to leave this style in for a few days to give my hair a break. What’s your favorite protective style?

xoxo,

E

 

Bantu Knots

‘ello Loves!

I’m going to keep this post short and sweet. I did 22 bantu knots Wednesday night on dry hair that I’d been wearing in a bun for 3 days. I wet my hair a little and used Cantu Shea Butter Leave-in Conditioning Damage Repair Cream. I did two strand twists and then wrapped my hair around to make the bantu knots.

For the takedown, I used a quarter-sized amount of argan oil and 1) twisted the bantu knots in the opposite direction that they were wrapped to loosen them a little, 2) slowly pulled the bantu knot out so it would keep it’s springy shape, 3) and then untwisted the two strand twist. I only separated my hair a little because I didn’t want to stretch it out too much. Here are the pics from yesterday:

Bantu knots are slowly becoming my go-to style on dry hair because they’re pretty simple to put in. I have never tried to do a full head of them while my hair was wet though because they take so long to dry. I usually do between 10-25. Do you prefer bantu knots on wet or dry hair?

xoxo,

E

P.S. Happy Early Valentine’s Day!! And if you don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, Happy Early Anti-Valentine’s Day!! 🙂

Another day, another twist-out…with a new leave-in conditioner

‘ello Loves!

It’s been a while! I wanted to share some flat twist-out results (from August) using Infusium 23 Leave-In Conditioner, Olive Oil and Ecostyler Gel to set. Back in the day, my mother always used Infusium 23 Leave-In Conditioner in my hair so I decided to give it a try when I saw it in the store.

I started on dry unstretched hair and did eight flat twists total. I usually add perm rods or flexi rods to the ends of my twist-outs to ensure they stay twisted. This time, I rolled the perm rods all the way up for a tighter curl and to take away some length because I’ve been wanting to cut my hair and wanted a shorter look lol. I’m not cutting it any time soon though! Also, when using rods on the ends of your twists, it’s very important to make sure you’re rolling your hair on the rods in the same direction your hair is twisted so the pattern will be continuous! I’ve messed up a lot of twist-outs because the ends are curling in a different direction than the rest of my hair.

 

Here’s how my hair looked after I removed the twists and did not separate them. I like the curl pattern I get from doing eight flat twists, but you should use more or less depending on how tight you want the curls to be. This is post-minor fluffing and separation using my fingers. I didn’t want too much volume on the first day because I knew the humidity would make it bigger on its own.

 

I forgot to take more pictures as the week went on, but this is how the curls expanded by day 5. Also, you usually can only see the color of my hair in the sunlight, so that’s why it looks redder here. I slept with my hair in a pineapple and did not retwist it at night.

 

I LOVED the shine and feel of my hair from the Infusium 23. It was noticeably stronger, soft and moisturized the entire week. I’ve been using it ever since and my hair has been really happy! What’s your favorite leave-in conditioner?

xo,

E

P.S. Have a beautiful weekend!